I’ve been offered 100 euros for my copy of Hammer of the Scots. Reason is, of course, the decision made by Columbia Games: “To improve product output and customer service, all Columbia Games products will henceforth be sold ONLY by mail order, telephone, or via www.columbiagames.com.” Which is of course nice, except when you live outside USA.
Well, I’m not selling — because then I’d have to buy me another one. I would make profit (after shipping, customs and taxes, the game costs about 75 euros) but the profit is too small for all the trouble I’d have to go through. The prospective buyer gets a better deal if he just buys the game directly from Columbia Games.
I’m not sure if the policy of Columbia Games is good. At least they could have an European distributor. I could definitely consider Liberty, if it were available locally. Ordering it from the States is simply too big an effort.
One response to “Hammer of the Scots and the Columbia Games independence”
Sort of a same thing with roleplaying games; I’ve been a Columbia customer on that front since early 90’s, first through European distributors, and for the last eight years or so, as direct customer (it might be few cents cheaper, but the difference comes from getting products right away). The distribution to Finland is even more difficult than to some other European countries, since practically only way to pay for the stuff is by creditcard. Swedes have the luxury of using Paypal with bank transactions, which we still lack.
Ordering direct works well enough if one has a credit card — the shipping costs and pre-order prices sort of cancel each other out, so there’s no monetary loss because of shipping. That’s probably a different thing with boardgames, since the shipping costs are noticeably higher.